It is generally known to use gang mounted vacuum pick-up cups for handling articles of many different descriptions. The primary use of which I am aware and the general area to which the apparatus and method of the present invention is directed, pertain to packaging machines having an article handling section where articles are grouped, and then picked up and transferred from one conveyor to a carton on another conveyor. The articles are usually picked up as a planar array of spaced articles and placed at the output area in the same general orientation, such as shown by the Powell U.S. Pat. No. 1,987,336, issued Jan. 8, 1935.
In the general area of moving a group of spaced articles by a gang of suction cups, it is sometimes desirable to modify the pattern of the articles during the transfer operation. For example, where a number of articles are to be placed in a compact pattern in a container or box, it has been found desirable to compact or shrink the pattern during transfer so that the articles neatly and snugly fit the container. One method of accomplishing this end result is shown in the Voullaire U.S. Pat. No. 3,318,068, issued May 9, 1967. In this patent, there is shown a scissors-like linkage system operative to reduce the outer dimensions of the group of articles in one direction. The mechanism used is relatively complicated and requires a separate servo mechanism to make the pattern shift. The shifting is accomplished only by moving certain of the articles in a vertical direction, which renders the mechanism generally unsuitable for assuring both gentle handling of the articles and single plane positioning in the output area.
Thus, a particular need for improved article handling of the type described exists in the area of handling relatively delicate pieces, such as bread products, including muffins and individual cakes. In this particular environment, I am unaware of a successful system for (1) picking up the individual baked goods articles from the pans in which the cooking takes place; (2) shrinking the pattern by a simple tilting action; and (3) transferring the articles while still in a single planar array to the box or tray in which the goods are packaged for sale. An arrangement, such as shown in the Voullaire patent, cited above, that shifts the articles vertically twice during a single cycle would not be successful in such an environment since the edges of the articles would likely interfere with each other as the articles move past each other, resulting in unacceptable breakage and spoilage of the product.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a suction cup, that provides efficient pickup, transfer, deposit and simultaneous tilting of the articles, said tilting serving to generate the desired pattern shrinking or expansion to meet the spatial requirements of the output area that may be different from the original transfer station.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a suction cup sub-combination that provides for tilting of the article or articles by differential collapse across the cup.